To ask why people believe in ghosts and other supernatural nonsense?

[BowieFan]

I just don't get it, I really don't.

There has been no scientific evidence of any genuine psychics or people who can contact the dead (and trust me, people have poured millions into trying to find genuine ones) and yet people still believe this rubbish. How do mediums still make money when it's obvious all they're doing is cold reading?

There's never been a single clear sighting of a ghost or any photographic proof of one.

I really feel sorry for the people who believe this nonsense - they must be lacking something that they feel they have to rely on something that doesn't exist to get answers in their life.

Cote, do you teach your children that some people are more worthy than others? Who do you include in the worthy group?

LOL that's not what Cote said

and most certainly NOT all beliefs deserve respect, no!

Obviously, the word "worthy" was referring to the beliefs and not the people.

I would worry about being misunderstood, except that many years of these "belief" threads have taught that you deliberately misrepresent people's posts.

I don't get the point of this thread.

Op will never belive in what she has never seen or felt. Fine.

Other people have seen and felt. Fine.

What's the point in the op keep telling us all she can't understand what she can't understand?

Op you can't understand it ok that's fine so live and let live but don't feel feel superior because that sounds twatty

But busy on another thread talking about bedrooms with locks on the outside and a hidden room.

So you don't believe, but want to encourage other people?

Think that's this thread getting

Different people believe different things and they are all worthy of respect, not one is more worthy than another" is a foolish thing to teach a child, not least because it is false.

Yes. I assume racists and misogynists hold their views sincerely. Do do we afford them equal respect as 'one set of beliefs around many ' I respect people's right to air their views, but I don't automatically accord respect to other people's beliefs or treat them of equal merit.

Apologies if I misunderstood you Cote. I took Different people believe different things and all are worthy of respect, not one is more worthy than another. to be referring to people.

Lol, yes, easy mistake to make at this time of night.

I'm not a believer. I've had things happen but all explainable.

I do love woo threads. I also like ghost stories and supernatural thrillers.

While I don't believe, I enjoy the thought and like being spooked.

I don't believe in god either but love a church service, a wedding, christening or carol service. Funerals not so much.

I've not yet been lucky enough to attend a Hindu wedding but think I would love it.

gettingtherequickly

Yes, except that I'm not claiming it to be haunted. Just that when we bought it we found it weird that there were locks on the outside of the bedrooms and a whole hidden room. Surely anyone would find that creepy, regardless of if they believe or not? We were worried it had been owned by an abuser or something.

RockyBird

I'm exactly the same. Complete atheist and yet one of my joys in life is going to a nice service and singing hymns.

I also love supernatural stories and a good horror film. Like you said, you don't have to believe in these things to be scared by them. If anything, I think it's easier to enjoy them as a non-believer because if you believe you generally tend to think ghosts and the like are harmless.

I haven't the smallest particle of belief in the supernatural, and agree entirely with previous posters who have pointed out how fallible our memories are, and how easily tricked our senses - the supernatural is a human fantasy, and even things like the kinds of ghosts/hauntings we unconsciously 'expect' to see are culturally-determined.

Having said that, I think that it's actually pretty interesting from an anthropological point of view to think about the kinds of things we are 'haunted' by, and the kinds of stories (personal memories of an 'event' we understand as a haunting, urban legends, more widely-known ghost stories associated with a particular place, building etc) we construct as a way of making sense of things we believe we have experienced, and the extent to which it's mediated by the culture we live in.

Like where I grew up (Catholic, rural Ireland), all the local 'ghost' stories I heard were about strange things frightening the priest's horse as he went to get the Blessed Sacrament at night to take to a death bed (the devil trying to fight the powers of God for the dying soul etc etc), a passerby called into a lonely church late at night to serve a ghost mass, haunted crossroads (usually the location of the burials of suicides and unbaptised babies) and hauntings at places where there were famine pits (mass graves from the 1840s). It makes 'sense' that those kinds of stories emerged out of rural Catholicism and a not too distant famine past.

We have a family 'ghost' who has been 'seen' by a number of children down the years in a now empty family house - a shadowy woman who comes in and tucks up children, or who is felt as someone sitting down on the end of a bed. Again, reading between the lines, these are my great-grandmother's longing memories of her beloved stepmother she was orphaned young, and was devoted to her stepmother, who also died when she was in her early teens, and whom she believed still came to tuck her in after her funeral her own grieving fantasies and memories have been transmitted down by her recounting them to her children and grandchildren, who then interpret half-asleep creaks and mattress shifts as that ghost.

Wild that's really interesting. I think you can see the same thing in the fact that people used to believe they were 'taken away' by witches riding on broomsticks, but now in the same situation believe they are taken away by aliens.

Yes, and apparently investigations of sleep paralysis suggest that what you hallucinate when you are having an episode is also culturally dependent. Virtually everyone in sleep paralysis hallucinations sees a threatening intruder in their room or pressing down on them, but Americans are more likely to report figures that look like aliens, people from parts of Africa with beliefs in demons will report demons, and Europeans are more likely to view what they see as a ghost. So you hallucinate something from your own culture's belief system.